


Get Off Of My Case

by anamnesisUnending



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Fluff, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 03:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16802824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamnesisUnending/pseuds/anamnesisUnending
Summary: A difficult case results in a truly awful day for Juno. It gets better from there.





	Get Off Of My Case

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PresAlex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresAlex/gifts).



> Happy birthday Lex!!!!!!
> 
> alternate title suggested by my roommate: "Mistah Steel, is it gay to have friends?"

Rita’s practically got Juno pinned to the couch, legs draped over his lap, one hand curled into a fist around the fabric of his shirt, and another pressing an ice pack to his bruised—shit, maybe broken—ribs. He can’t blame her, really. For one thing, the couch is the only upright piece of furniture in the office at the moment, and for another, it was hardly twenty minutes ago that a bunch of masked goons were holding a knife at Rita’s throat, having her dig through files to give them everything related to Juno’s most recent case. It might not always seem like it, but Rita’s good under pressure. Probably wouldn’t have transferred the files at all, would have corrupted all the data on the goons’ comms in an instant, if they hadn’t decided putting a blaster to Juno’s head might serve as better motivation for her. And that’s why—

“I’m so so sorry Mistah Steel, I know I shouldn’t’a given them the files because I know this is an important case but—”

“Rita,” Juno says. It hurts to speak, between the bruising all up one side of his face and the way his ribs ache with every breath he takes.

“—they were gonna shoot you and I couldn’t let them and—”

“Rita, it’s fine.” Juno sets a hand on her shoulder, hoping that’s comforting. “It’s okay. They’re Captain Khan’s problem now, and if they transferred the files to whoever they’re working for before we could stop them, then…” Juno grits his teeth, tries not to grip Rita’s shoulder too tightly in anger. “Then I guess I’ll just deal with that.”

“I’m sorry, boss,” Rita says one more time, quieter now.

“It’s _fine._ ” He tries his best not to snarl the words. It’s been a difficult case, the type that makes him pace a hole in the floorboards of the office, and snap at anyone who suggests he take a break, and ignore calls from Mick, and feel like he’s got all the pieces and it would be so easy to put them together if he weren’t such an idiot. It doesn’t help that apparently wherever Nureyev’s gone he can’t get a comms signal. Juno’s trying not to worry about that, but if he’s honest with himself, that worry is half the reason he’s throwing himself into this case the way he is.

Not that it’s gotten him anything but trouble. His right eye is swollen shut—lucky, really, that it’s already his blind side, but it does mean that he won’t be able to take the glass prosthetic out for a couple of days. On his forehead, a couple scrapes are covered by Andromeda bandaids in bright, garish colors—perks of letting Rita stock the office’s first aid kit. She’s sporting a matching one where the knife nicked her collarbone as Juno was taking out the man holding it. All in all Rita’s more shaken than hurt. That’s what matters, Juno tries to remind himself. He’s pretty beaten up, but he’ll take a punch to the face or a kick to the ribs, or even a couple dozen if it means Rita doesn’t have to go through the same.

Besides, it’s the office that’s taken the brunt of the damage. There are deep gouges in the walls from the furniture being thrown around. The file cabinet scratched up the floor pretty bad too when it got toppled over, and now it lies on its side, wounded and dented. His desk, missing a leg. One of its drawers, reduced to a scattered pile of long, sharp, synth-wood splinters. Folders and papers strewn haphazardly across the floor. Burn marks on the ceiling from stray blaster fire that probably won’t get fixed until it’s time to sell the place. Dirt that won’t ever come out of the rug on the floor, spilling out of the broken flower pot where Rita had been trying to resurrect some plant with long, spidery leaves.

It’s too much to hope, Juno assumes, that he’ll get even half of it cleaned up by the time a new client comes by. He hardly even wants to try.

He tries to extract himself out from underneath Rita, drawing a noise of complaint from her in the process.

“Boss, you better not be getting up to work on this case again,” she says.

“So what if I am? It’s not gonna solve itself,” he says.

She grabs him by the arm and tugs him back down onto the couch, shoving the ice pack into the side of his face. He winces at the cold and the pressure on his bruises, and sinks back down into the cushions with weakened resolve.

Rita relinquishes the ice pack to Juno’s hand, and folds her arms across her chest with her best approximation of a stern expression. “You were asleep at your desk when I came in this morning which I know for a fact means you stayed over at the office last night, and probably you weren’t even planning on sleeping at all, and you’ve been running yourself ragged all week and I ain’t putting up with it anymore.”

“Rita—”

“Captain Khan said the case he was working could be connected and that you should hold off until he can go through the details with you tomorrow, so you’ve really got no reason to go over the same evidence or go out and get yourself hurt again, so you should probably just go home and get some rest for once.”

Juno buries his face in his hands. “I— I’m not just gonna leave you alone, Rita. What if they send someone after you again and I’m not there?” 

“Mistah Steel you really don’t have to…”

He can still hear the fear in her voice though, as the thought of that sinks in, and it makes him feel heavy with dread and exhaustion.

“If you really want me to go home then you can come to my apartment and sleep on my couch,” he offers.

“I’m pretty sure your couch is about a million years old and it looks like you pulled it off the side of the road and I _really_ don’t wanna think about what the previous owners might have done on it,” Rita says.

Juno snorts. “You can use my bed, then, not like I’m going to. We don’t know who these people have hurt, but they came after you and I’m not letting that happen again, and I’m not letting it happen to anyone else either.”

Rita sighs. “You know, I was really hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”

She practically tackles Juno, then, trapping his arms down at his sides and pulling him down until she’s lying on the couch and he’s on top of her, trying to squirm out of her grip.

“ _Ow—_ Rita— _quit it!_ ”

“Nuh-uh, boss, you’re going to sleep and that’s _final._ ”

The wrestling match on the couch causes such a commotion that they both nearly miss the sound of the window sliding open, but Juno manages to wrest himself from Rita’s grip just in time to lock eyes with the man who has evidently decided this is the right time and place to begin his modeling career. 

Nureyev is leaning elegantly against the window frame, one leg propped up on the sill and the other dangling into the room, nearly brushing the floor. The dirty neon light from the alley the window faces is somehow made picturesque—regal, even—by the way it’s cast on him, and he looks over the ruins of Juno’s office like it’s his kingdom.

“I see you’ve been redecorating?” he says. “I don’t like it.”

Juno pushes himself back over to the other side of the couch. He catches himself before he can say Nureyev’s name, but with no other thought of what to call him, what to say, he just stares, dumbstruck, at the man posing on his windowsill like he’s a work of art. And if Juno’s honest with himself, _he is_.

Rita springs up, leaning over the arm of the couch, and graciously interrupts his stunned silence. “Oh. Hi Mistah Glass-Rose-Quill-Charlemagne-Noble!”

Nureyev chuckles and says, “You’ve found Adrienne Charlemagne? Now that’s a new one.” He drops down from the window and pulls it shut behind him.

“Not really, the file said it’s about a decade old, actually.”

“Do be careful, Rita dear. If you keep digging into my past like this you’ll have the Galatean authorities on my tail in no time. Along with about thirty other planets, I think.”

“Nah, I scrubbed the data as soon as I found it, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Nureyev’s face lights up with a radiant, almost awed grin. “You’re an angel, Rita. An absolute miracle worker.” He strides over to the couch with much more grace than anyone should have in delicate stiletto heels like that, and plants a kiss on Rita’s cheek, leaving behind a deep burgundy lipstick mark, before inserting himself between Rita and Juno.

Rita blushes and giggles at the kiss. “It ain’t that hard, really, I could teach you if you want.”

“That would be lovely,” Nureyev says, then turns his attention instead to his lover.

“ _Juno._ ” Always so reverent in the way he says his name. And always so gentle, the way he pulls him in close. Nureyev leans down and laces his fingers together behind Juno’s neck, his thumb brushing over the crook of Juno’s jaw. Kisses his forehead, lets his lips skim over the bruised surface of his face, kisses his lips. “Darling, you look dreadful, must you worry me so?”

Juno scowls at that, pulls back until Nureyev’s hands drop away. “I’m fine,” he snaps. “I can take care of myself. Besides, you think I don’t worry when you vanish out there in the galaxy without a trace? Or would it have ruined your dramatic entrance to call beforehand?”

Nureyev purses his lips, makes a neutral mask of his face, the way he always does when he’s hurt. And Juno feels that like a punch to the gut, hates the way he lashes out without meaning to.

“I’m sorry,” Nureyev says. “I didn’t mean to suggest you can’t take care of yourself, I just… prefer when we get into trouble together, rather than alone. I’ll spare you the details, but it was a difficult heist. I lost my comms, and by the time I got a new one the solar interference was too great for me to reach you, so I took the first flight back to Mars and came here as soon as I could.”

Juno looks down. “Don’t… don’t apologize. I’m glad you’re here.”

Nureyev tilts Juno’s chin up and presses another soft kiss to his lips. “If you’d like any help with this job, I’d be happy to—“

Rita makes an indignant squeak. “Oh no, absolutely not. I told Mistah Steel this job is gonna wait til morning. We’re taking a night off.”

So they do. The three of them pile into Juno’s car and Nureyev drives them to Rita’s apartment. For once, Juno’s glad the two of them get on like a house on fire. It means they’re perfectly content to talk to each other on the drive over, and not rake him over the coals for the way he’s been acting lately. He knows that Rita’s right; his sleep-deprived brain is all but useless at this point, and he needs some time away from the case, needs some new information to see it in the right light. But he can never shake that feeling of shame and helplessness whenever he pulls back from an unsolved case, that fear that something’s going to go wrong and it’s going to be his fault for not acting when he could have.

Nureyev reaches over to clasp his hand, breaking him off from his worries. “Juno?”

“Huh?”

“I said, you’ll make the popcorn, right?” Rita repeats. “For the movie?”

Juno shakes his head from thoughts of the case. “Yeah, sure, Rita.” He squeezes Nureyev’s hand and in return Nureyev taps out a morse code pattern against it. He doesn’t need to translate to know it says _I love you._

He doesn’t like to admit it, but it helps. It had been over a day since he’d left the office before this, and being in Rita’s apartment with it’s warm orange light and peach-painted walls and beaded curtains in every doorway is for once a welcome change. He sets about making popcorn on the stove, relieved to have a simple task that he can actually enjoy the results of, after a week of chasing down leads with no resolution.

Rita, meanwhile, rifles through the fridge for other snacks. The first kernel explodes with a hiss of hot oil, and Rita lets out a gasp that otherwise would have led Juno to assume she’d just witnessed a murder. Instead, he just shakes the pan and says, “What did you find?”

“Okay so it’s gotta thaw for a little while but I was looking through the freezer and I just so happened to remember that last week Franny and I were baking cookies for her radio station fundraiser, and so we set a batch of dough aside just for ourselves except _then_ that marathon of _Codes and Key Cards_ came on—you know, the show about the two roommates who sneak in an android under their landlord’s nose, except then the one roommate realizes that she’s in _love_ with the android, but the android turns out to be part of a cult that the _other_ roommate’s dad got tricked into joining when she was just a baby and so _she_ tells the landlord that the android’s been living there, and he and the one roommate get kicked out, but _then_ they come up with this plan to _take down the cult from the inside!_ And so anyway I got distracted and Franny had to leave so we never made that last batch so it sat in the freezer for a while but it turns out that was a good thing because we get to have it now!”

“Should I fetch a cookie sheet, then?” Nureyev asks.

Rita fixes him with a look of utter betrayal and horror. “And _ruin_ a perfectly perfect batch of chocolate chip cookie dough?”

Juno whirls around just in time to catch the mildly bewildered look on Nureyev’s face. “Wait, hold on. Have you _never_ eaten raw cookie dough?”

“I— Juno, you may recall that my career doesn’t lend itself particularly well to baking? So no, I haven’t.”

“Mistah Glass-Rose-Whoever-you-are, _that_ is _no excuse!_ ” Rita scolds. Juno doesn’t know anyone who could argue with her when she gets like this, and Nureyev is tolerant enough to humor her, so he lets her wave a spoon at him for a moment, then drag him off to help her pick a movie while the frozen cookie dough thaws.

Juno finishes making the popcorn, and when he joins them by the tv he isn’t surprised to find they’ve already settled on some cheesy action flick about an archaeologist turned cat burglar, robbing museums to reclaim the artifacts for the planets xe discovered them on. Juno rolls his eye.

“Figures you’d pick the one about the nerdy thief,” he says.

“‘Always root for the home team,’ I believe, is how the saying goes?” Nureyev says.

“Then there better be a detective in this one too, or I’m boycotting.”

“There is!” Rita chimes in. “Boss, it’s the best, because the whole movie you think she’s trying to catch the thief, but _then_ it turns out—” 

“Let’s not ruin the surprise for him,” Nureyev interrupts, saving them from what probably would have turned into a half-hour monologue.

Rita pouts for a moment. Then, she disappears back into the kitchen and returns with the bowl of cookie dough, three spoons triumphantly stabbed into it. She shoves the bowl into Nureyev’s hands. “Okay, you gotta try it.”

Nureyev raises an eyebrow and shovels out a spoonful of cookie dough, pausing to make note of the way Rita and Juno are watching so intently. He grins, evidently pleased with the attention, and makes a show of licking the dough from the spoon, rather than just putting it in his mouth. He closes his eyes, savoring it, and when Rita impatiently demands a response he points his spoon at her, swallows, and says, “So why bother baking it anyway?”

“See?” she says.

Between the three of them, the bowl of cookie dough barely lasts the first twenty minutes of the movie. The popcorn makes it a little longer, but only barely, and once the snacks are gone it’s not long before Juno starts to nod off, head lolling to one side and landing on Nureyev’s shoulder. The third time he jerks himself back into wakefulness, Nureyev guides him down to rest his head in his lap. He twists around so he’s not lying on the bruises on his blind side, and it sets him facing in towards Nureyev’s hip, away from the screen. Rita doesn’t seem to mind, for once, that he’s paying no attention to the movie. She doesn’t even complain when he accidently kicks at her legs as he’s trying to get comfortable.

He hasn’t liked to sleep like this since before he lost his eye again, always feeling too vulnerable being on the couch out in the open, blind to all the world without his one good eye facing up. Tonight, though, he feels safe for once. He’s curled up between two of the people he loves most in the galaxy, and for all that they’ve been through they’re mostly unharmed. When Nureyev’s hand comes down to tangle in his hair, he hopes that—for now, at least—that’s all that really matters.

*** 

When he wakes again, the credits have already rolled. Maybe, he thinks, it’s the absence of noise from the television that woke him, a fresh quiet settling over the room. Or maybe it’s the gentle, soundless motion of Rita’s glitter pen rolling across his skin. He twitches at the feeling of it when Rita sets the pen to his arm again to start a new line, but she carries on without more than a momentary pause, evidently not realizing he’s awake yet. That’s fine. His mind is still fuzzy with dreamlike static, and he doesn’t care to pull himself from the haze just yet.

By next morning he’ll probably have a new half-sleeve of sparkling pink and purple doodles—hearts and baby rabbits and weird houseplants and odd binary phrases he’ll forget to translate. Notes, too, little reminders of things Rita’s seen over the past couple days and forgotten to tell Juno about. It’s an old habit of hers, from back when she first started working as his secretary. She’d realized quickly that he’d miss important information if she messaged it to his comms, so instead she’d started writing it on him—appointments, mostly, but also bits of evidence she’d collected for cases. And once she’d made a habit of invading his personal space like that, the doodles were just a natural extension of her boredom whenever he happened to be the first thing in reach.

The quiet lingers for a moment longer, and then Rita pulls the pen off of Juno’s skin and asks, “Why do you spend so much time away from Mistah Steel?”

Nureyev’s hand stills where it’s stroking Juno’s hair.

Rita carries on, “And don’t just say it’s ‘cause of your job, because back when I was working at the HCPD the crime rates on Mars were some of the highest in the galaxy, and really there’s a whole bunch of stuff you could steal here and probably you wouldn’t even have to worry about getting caught because the HCPD’s so busy and doesn’t really care anyway, and even if you _did_ get caught—and I wouldn’t offer this for anyone else because honestly I don’t really approve of the whole crime thing, except that some of the fancy jewels you bring back are really very nice and you’re much more polite than any of the other criminals I’ve met, and even the ones in the movies usually aren’t so polite, and you even make the boss happy which not a lot of people can do—so anyway even if you got caught I could take care of that real easy so you wouldn’t even really have to worry about that.”

“I—“ Nureyev sighs.

“It’s okay, you can take your time,” Rita says.

Nureyev tugs gently at Juno’s curls. “I suppose I never really learned how to stay in one place too long. How to call a place home.” Juno wonders if he ever even considered Brahma home, those first sixteen years of his life, or if only New Kinshasa was given that false honor.

“Well I mean it can’t be that hard to learn.”

“Maybe. But I’ve… never really wanted to before.”

“But do you want to _now?_ ”

Nureyev hums. “I don’t know. The galaxy is so beautiful, Rita. There are so many places I’d like to take him. I’d take you, too, if you’d like.”

Rita’s quiet for a moment. “Nah. I mean as nice as that sounds, and as much as I love Mistah Steel, a vacation’s gotta be a time to get away from your boss. But don’t worry, we’ll wear him down eventually.”

Nureyev laughs. “That we will.”

Juno loves the sound of his laugh, loves the sound of his voice. It could easily lull him back into sleep, and so he lets it.

*** 

Juno doesn’t remember moving during the night, but when he wakes he’s not on Rita’s couch anymore. He’s lying on his back on Rita’s bed, one arm dangling gracelessly over the side of the bed. When he turns his head, he sees that Nureyev is propped up on one elbow, examining the array of doodles on Juno’s other arm.

“Good morning, love,” he says, eyes flitting up to meet Juno’s.

“Hey,” he says in response, smiling a bit. “Admiring the artwork?”

Nureyev taps a large, scribbly portion in pink ink. “I brought you roses.”

Juno looks down at where he’s pointing, and sure enough, Nureyev had drawn him what looked like it could possibly be a bouquet of flowers. “Huh, is that what those are?” Then with a grin, he says, “Thanks.”

Juno tries to pull Nureyev closer then, to kiss him or cuddle up against him, but he’s met with resistance. Nureyev looks back over his shoulder, and with a slight shift of the blankets, Juno can see that Rita’s arms are wrapped around him like a boa constrictor. She snores, and Nureyev turns his head back towards Juno with a look that knows the utter futility of trying to free himself before she wakes.

“She’s very clingy,” Nureyev says. “We thought it might be best to spare your ribs that experience, though I didn’t realize that might mean breaking a few of my own.”

Juno snorts out a laugh. “My ribs appreciate your noble sacrifice.”

He lays back and reaches for Nureyev’s hand, then tightens his grip on it when he remembers his case. He lurches up, his ribs screaming in protest at the motion. “Shit, I have to get down to the station.”

Nureyev looks confused and concerned for a moment, clinging to Juno’s hand as he hauls himself out of bed. “Oh, Juno, no, there’s nothing to worry about,” he insists.

“Like hell there is,” Juno says, grabbing his comms from the bedside table. There’s a message from Captain Khan on it, timestamped _hours_ ago. He curses himself for sleeping through the notification.

Nureyev interrupts before he can open the message, though. “Your police captain friend called at some ungodly hour this morning. Apparently, with the help you and Rita gave him, he managed to solve your case. He’ll need you and Rita to come down to the station to do some paperwork, but I thought it best that that wait until the afternoon.”

Juno opens the message. It confirms what Nureyev told him.

“I think you deserve a quiet morning in, today,” he says.

And he says it with such conviction that Juno crawls back into bed and thinks he just might believe it.


End file.
